Electronic devices, such as laptop and desktop computers, handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, digital cameras, and the like, offer a variety of utility applications and services to their respective users. For example, many devices include calendaring and/or “to-do list” applications that allow the user to calendar appointments and to enter tasks directly into the device or into a calendaring service in a remote server. The calendaring application can be configured to provide a reminder of an appointment or task to the user at or near the time the appointment has been scheduled.
In addition, mobile communication devices, such as handheld PDAs and smartphones, typically include applications that determine and utilize the current location of the device. For example, a mapping application can use the device's current location to provide street directions from the current location to a desired destination location. These devices often include a position determining system that is configured to identify the position of the device within a certain range depending on the device and location identifying technique. Some devices can use a sophisticated position determining system, such as a Global Positioning System (GPS). The GPS is a satellite-based radio navigation system that uses signals from three or four satellites to compute the current latitude, longitude and elevation of a GPS receiver in the device anywhere on earth down to within a few meters. Other devices can use a location identifying technique based on which base station is servicing the device, that is, the location of the device is within a range of the base station from which a call is made. Other devices can use location identifying techniques based on triangulation between the device and at least two base stations.
In order to make electronic devices more user friendly, many utility applications are now configured to interact dynamically with the user. In some instances, an application can provide linguistic phrases or prompts which the user can simply select so that the user is not required to manually type in the selected phrase. This is particularly helpful for users of handheld communication devices that have small keypads and/or keys. An application can also provide a prompt to the user that refers to an object about which some user decision or action is requested. For example, the object can be a person, place or event and the application can generate a prompt asking the user whether he would like to take an action regarding the person, place or event.
While providing prompts can be very useful, their effectiveness can be limited if the user has trouble identifying the object to which the prompt refers. For example, if the prompt refers to a person and the user cannot remember who the person is, then the user might have difficulties deciding whether the requested action should be taken.
To help the user, some applications can provide a brief description of the object. Nevertheless, because most applications are discrete modules that operate independently from each other, the content of the description is limited to the nature of the application. For example, an address book application typically manages contact information and a mapping application typically manages location information. In most cases, the address book application cannot access/use the location information and vice versa. Accordingly, the description generated by the address book application is limited to contact information, while the description generated by the mapping application is limited to location information. Ideally, the description of the object should be contextual and meaningful to the user, and should not be limited to the nature of application for which the prompt is used.